


The Healing

by MaureenLycaon



Category: Original Work
Genre: Paleontology, k/t mass extinction, paleoporn, prehistory, recovery from mass extinction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:35:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23412457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaureenLycaon/pseuds/MaureenLycaon
Summary: A giant meteor ended the Age of Dinosaurs. Now, life begins to revive on the blasted continent of North America.





	The Healing

**Author's Note:**

> (A friend pointed out that while many disaster-porn stories describe mass extinctions of ages past, not many stories describe how life recovered afterward. I took that as a challenge. So this happened.
> 
> Written by Maureen Lycaon, 2020. All rights reserved under the Berne Convention.)

One year has passed since the meteorite fell.

Most of the continent of North America is churned earth and shattered rock, devoid of life. The shock wave, the fiery debris, the massive firestorms, and the thermal pulse destroyed even the bacteria in the soil.

The cataclysm left the rest of the globe almost as devastated. Before it happened, Earth's land surface was tropical green from pole to pole. Now a funereal shroud of suspended ash and vapors covers the planet; beneath that, its surface remains locked in ice, snow, and darkness.

No animal heavier than 25 kilograms remains alive.

An observer from space, looking at the mass grave that planet Earth has become, might think that life has taken a blow from which it will never recover. Surely, the last remaining sparks will wink out one by one in the cold and dark, leaving a dead world.

Appearances can be deceiving.

The healing begins with dust and rain.

Trillions of tons of debris still float suspended in the atmosphere as tiny particles: pulverized rock, charred plants, burned dinosaurs. But as the particles fall to the ground below, the shroud of dust starts to thin. It still blocks sunlight from the land, but the atmosphere begins to warm.

Each remaining particle of debris is a potential nucleus for a raindrop.

When temperatures have risen enough that liquid water becomes possible, the rains begin to fall. The storms are epic -- tremendous deluges of frigid water. With each rainfall, more dust washes out of the atmosphere and Earth's funereal shroud frays a little more. The darkness slowly shifts, from pitch black through charcoal to gray.

During a brief pause in the rain, a shaft of sunlight breaks through. It is the first sunlight to reach Earth's surface since the shroud covered it, and the light strikes only a patch of ice on the frozen soil. Within moments, the gap in the clouds closes up again. But as the days pass, more and more rays of sunlight reach the benighted planet.

The cold's grip weakens still more. The thick ice gripping the coasts and lake shores begins to melt. Snow turns to icy slush in the rain.

The blast wave and the rain of fiery fragments covered most of North America, but certain places escaped total obliteration. Most of these lay on the western coast, where a chain of still-rising young mountains running north to south shielded them from the first effects of the impact.

Within these little sanctuaries, life begins to stir.

The organisms best suited to this bleak, empty world are bacteria and fungi. Some of their spores have survived the heat pulse and the unnatural winter by being buried in the soil. They do not need to wait for the cloud cover to vanish completely, adapted as they are to shadowy forest floors. As soon as the growing warmth permits, the spores revive and begin to feed and multiply.

The bacteria find their nourishment in the complex chemical mixture of the soil itself, as well as in dead plants and scattered thawing carcasses. Fungi find the charred, rotting, dead forests ideal for their growth.

As the cycle of decomposition picks up where it left off, soil begins to form again.

As the light increases, another group of survivors begins to grow: the lichens.

Each lichen growth is not one living thing, but three: a species of algae and two species of fungi, joined together.* The algae perform photosynthesis, making energy from sunlight. The fungi break down the rock or soil for nutrients. Yet, all three species get most of their water and nutrients from the rain and dust. Thanks to this partnership, they can live on bare soil and even bare rock.

They look like crusts, often brightly colored; like leafless tiny shrubs; like gelatinous mold; like a dusting of powder. Lichens grow slowly, but every now and then a small piece breaks off, rolling away from its parent. Sometimes these pieces land in suitable territory and begin growing.

They also release spores, like bacteria and lone fungi, but with a unique twist: each spore is an algae cell surrounded by bacterial spores, so that their special partnership continues.

These pioneers slowly increase their numbers. The slightest breeze carries their spores for long distances. Soon, other humble life forms join them: mosses, liverworts, worms, nematodes. Living biotic crusts form and spread in once-lifeless dirt, composed of many species living together in their own ecosystem.

As the earth warms further, the first hardy ferns spring up. They will never reach the height of their proud ancestors; the cold stunts their growth. Even so, as the months pass, each little colony of ferns matures and begins to breed.

Since they are ferns, they produce no seeds. Instead, microscopic spores form in sacs on the undersides of their fronds. When the sacs burst, they release the spores to ride the wind.

Most such spores never find a suitable place to grow; hungry microbes devour most of the rest. Only one out of every few million survives. In nature, those are acceptable odds.

The fern colonies spread -- slowly at first, then more quickly as geometric multiplication plays out. Normally, they would have to compete with more advanced plants, but now there are none. Green, feathery fronds spread across the shattered landscape. When they die and rot, the bacteria feast upon their remains, forming deeper soil.

To a human observer, the dominant aspect of this new ecosystem would be the ferns: delicate-looking green fronds growing in unbroken profusion, rippling in the wind.

The clouds are breaking up now. From space, that observer could not pick out the tiny patches of dark green where life has revived. Most of North America looks bleak and brown, with vast areas of white where the ice and snow still resist melting.

Scattered through the larger refuges, some insects and other invertebrates still cling to life after the bitter winter. Most of their refuges border the ponds and lakes fed by volcanic springs on the western side of the mountains. In the soil, kept above freezing by the nearby warm water, some of the eggs of these tiny creatures have managed to survive. 

For most insects, the population explosion of ferns and fungi is not a blessing, because they hold little nutrition. Few animals have adapted to subsist only upon these. Nevertheless, among the survivors is one species that eats the roots of a certain kind of fern. Another species feeds upon a different fern's new shoots. Still others have evolved to eat various species of fungi. Now, these species have a head start. Their populations follow the ferns and the fungi, beginning to spread outside of the refuges.

Other insects can exploit the massive quantities of dead vegetation and occasional rotting corpse. These species are truly in luck. Cockroaches can eat nearly anything. Carrion-feeding flies buzz in the growing warmth, seeking carcasses in which to lay their eggs. 

One group of surviving insects hits a jackpot. For termites, the vast stretches of flattened forests are a gigantic feast. Their populations explode, spreading wherever they can find dead wood. As they gobble and digest and defecate, they begin recycling the dead forests of the Cretaceous into fresh soil.

Not all plants are as lucky as the ferns. More advanced plants struggle for survival in the cold, the dim light, and the occasional acid rains that still plague the Earth. Some species that managed to survive the first few terrible hours and the dark, frozen year that followed now wink out of existence, as each plant in turn falls prey to the elements until the last viable root or seed is gone. Other plant species are too specialized; the impact destroyed their narrow ecological niches and doomed them. An unlucky few spring up in refuges with too many surviving insects, and are eaten into extinction -- followed shortly afterward by their devourers, which quickly starve. Some depended upon pollinating insects that did not survive.

Yet, some species have managed to survive -- if only in one sheltered place, or two, or ten.

The reign of ferns sets up its own downfall. When each fern dies, its remains rot into the earth, forming more soil. The root systems of living ferns hold that soil, preventing it from being washed away. As the layer of soil thickens, and the world warms, conditions become more favorable for other plants. Airborne seeds can travel a long way. Wherever a hole appears in the blanket of ferns, the seeds germinate.

The gymnosperms and angiosperms begin pushing back the ferns. Flowers begin to bloom again. In places, saplings rear their heads and grow taller.

The insects that live upon the flowering plants begin to multiply as well. Flies, the most ancient of all pollinators, get to work first. More resistant to cold than bees, they can also survive on scantier rations. For the moment, they have the advantage.

Still, in one refuge, a species of bee has miraculously survived, sleeping dormant in hollow trees and abandoned burrows. Soon the bees will emerge, hungry for nectar, pollinating the flowers and helping them to reproduce, competing with the flies.

In the bigger lake refuges, larger animals have survived -- not many, but some. These lakes retained enough warmth that they never froze all the way to the bottom, or volcanic springs within kept them above freezing. Debris from the plant and animal casualties above fell into them, joining the eternally rotting muck of the bottom.

Now these lakes swell, as ice and snow melt on the slopes above, washing even more debris into their muddy depths.

In the water and mud, animals lingered: snails, clams, other invertebrates, and even a few small fish. All of these were detrivores: that is, they fed on the vegetable and animal detritus that fell or washed in. The top layers of muck held enough food to keep them alive through the cold and darkness. Now, the return of the rain replenishes their supplies.

Their greatest challenge now is acid rain; the water's pH has dropped far enough to kill some of them. But as more meltwater flows into these ponds and lakes, it dilutes the acid.

A few frogs slumbered through the winter beneath the mud. They were lucky; this species could already hibernate whenever droughts or extremes of temperature happened. When the great cold came, they burrowed deep in the earth, slowed down their metabolisms until they hung upon the very edge of death, and waited. Now, as their mud sanctuaries warm again, they awaken and burrow out to resume their lives.

Even a few turtles ply their trade, swimming through the water looking for living and dead prey, and sunning themselves on the banks whenever the sun shines. 

On one lake refuge's muddy shores, a few of the world's last remaining crocodilians linger. The big adults all fell prey to hunger and the cold; their eggs and the smallest youngsters met the same bleak fate. But the larger juveniles were old enough to have fat reserves, and -- like the frogs and turtles -- they dug holes in which to wait out the cold. They did not quite hibernate, but their metabolism slowed down drastically. Now they feed upon smaller survivors and carrion, resuming their growth, to become the biggest surviving true predators.

In the shadows under the ferns and growing shrubs and rotting logs, between rocks, and in the patches of sun-struck soil, other creatures scurry, flit, and dart. Here, a small brown-feathered bird pecks at a seed. There, a furry, nervous mammal bounds jerkily across the ground, then darts into a burrow.

They live in an emerging ecosystem very different from the one before the catastrophe, with most of their predators missing. Above them, the still-gloomy sky is empty of life, save for the occasional flying insect.

All the pterosaurs have perished -- if not in the thermal pulse, then in the long, hungry winter that followed. They were already doomed: at the time of the meteor, only two kinds still lived, and both were highly specialized. The cataclysm merely sped up their extinction by a few million years.

The birds were almost -- but not quite -- as vulnerable; the small brown bird is one of a lucky few. Its species seldom flies except when it has to. When the great wind blasted the land, this bird was resting in an abandoned burrow. As the thermal pulse heated the planet, it instinctively stayed in its little shelter, trusting to the ground rather than the sky. 

With its fast metabolism, the bird did not have the option of hibernating. So it wandered relentlessly through the brutal winter, scavenging on dead dinosaurs, pecking at the frozen soil for any remaining seeds, sleeping and keeping warm in any small crevice or niche it could find. Now, as flowering plants multiply and scatter fresh seeds and insects emerge, food has become easier to find. It has even met a few others of its species. Soon, it will mate.

The little mammal belongs to a group called the multituberculates. It has a curious, sprawling stance, but otherwise its heavy-set, blocky body resembles a gopher's. Like the bird, it lives in burrows; unlike the bird, it can dig its own. Before the meteorite, it ventured out only at night, using its senses of hearing and smell to make its way through the undergrowth. The year-long darkness inconvenienced it hardly at all; only hunger was a challenge.

Of the three groups of mammals that lived in North America before the meteor, the multituberculates have fared the best, thanks to their burrowing habits. For the next few million years, they will thrive as they never have before, founding hundreds of new species. The placental mammals have not fared so well, but some species have also made it through. The marsupials suffered the worst: only one species still survives in North America, but not for much longer.

For animals on the coastline, there is an easy source of food: the growing windrows of dead and dying sea life.

The blast and the thermal pulse did not penetrate far below the surface of the oceans, but the year of darkness destroyed most of the plankton. The catastrophe in the oceans parallels the one on land, but in slow motion as creatures starve to death rather than being incinerated. The big sea-going reptiles -- the plesiosaurs, pliosaurs, and mosasaurs -- are already extinct. The remaining fish and other creatures are still dying off in vast droves.

The corpses wash up on the beaches to accumulate in rotting, stinking piles. For carrion-feeding insects and other invertebrates, the heaps of dead things are a vast storehouse of food. Mammals and birds feast upon both the corpses and on the smaller scavengers.

That off-planet observer would notice some changes now. Most of Earth's land surface is still brown, but the patches of white -- the last of the snow and ice -- have vanished. The little refuges have turned green, and the green is spreading into the land surrounding them.

As the years pass, the green spreads throughout the west coast of North America, individual patches of regeneration joining up. 

Life still has a lot of lost ground to regain.

The western mountain range (which will one day be called the Rocky Mountains) protected the coast when the asteroid fell. Now, its peaks stand as a barrier between the refuges and North America's blasted interior.

Carried by the winds, the spores of bacteria, fungi, and lichen ride over the tops of the mountains, crossing that barrier. They fall upon a vast wasteland -- millions of square kilometers of churned, scorched earth, stripped of all life.

Most of the spores die, but a few are of species that can survive even upon this sterile rubble. Of _these,_ a handful meet the right combination of moisture, rain, and shade that lets them revive. These lucky few face no competition and no natural enemies. Again, they start the first steps toward making viable soil.

Meanwhile, the ferns spread up the sides of the less active volcanoes. A few of their spores reach the interior. Once new soil has finally formed, they can survive, and begin spreading their fronds above the ground.

Again, bacteria, fungi, lichens, and ferns lead the recovery, becoming the first life forms to re-colonize the lifeless interior. Vast stands and swathes of ferns march east into the continent's center.

As the soil becomes still more fertile beneath their accumulated remains, more advanced plants and finally trees follow. The reclamation of North America's interior is slow, but certain.

It takes centuries to restore what a few terrible hours burned away. Still, a thousand years later, the continent has mature forests again. They do not look like the forests that grew before the catastrophe: some species of trees are missing, and species that once were rare are now common. The flowering plants are more abundant than ever before.

In these forests, birds chatter and insects buzz, hum, and chirp. Mammals scurry through the trees and burrow into the ground. Fish swim in the lakes, streams, and rivers. Turtles and crocodilians sunbathe along their banks, as frogs croak their mating songs. 

Some birds that still make their living on the ground are growing larger, as if bidding to replace the giant reptiles. Even a few of the scampering mammals, bereft of their former predators, are increasing in size.

Looking down upon North America now, that observer in space would see that green has returned nearly everywhere.

Of those dinosaurs that were not birds, nothing remains -- except for whatever bone fragments still resist rot and scavenging.

Meanwhile, far to the south:

Where two concentric, colossal crater rings rear above the ocean waves, green has crept up and covered the steep slopes. Lichens and mosses have found haven there and begun the long process of breaking down that rock. Debris drifting down is already beginning to cover the crater floor.

Eventually, the scar that marks where the meteorite fell will be buried 20 kilometers deep.

*Yes, two fungi species. The discovery of the second fungi species happened a few years ago, courtesy of Dr. Toby Spribille. Read https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/07/how-a-guy-from-a-montana-trailer-park-upturned-150-years-of-biology/491702/ for the details.


End file.
